Unless otherwise indicated herein, approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims listed below and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
In general, when multiple un-configured repeaters with a common group identifier (group ID) boot up at the same time, the repeaters will connect amongst themselves to form several independent networks. The repeaters of an independent network share the same service set identifier (SSID), pairwise master key (PMK) and channel(s), and the several independent networks will operate on different SSIDs, PMKs and channels. When two of such independent networks merge, there needs to be a mechanism to transfer configuration of one network to the other network.
In the context of dual-band repeaters, since two client (CLI) interfaces are available on each repeater, a single repeater can connect to two different repeaters and accept configurations from those two different repeaters. FIG. 10 shows dual-band repeaters D1, D2 and D3, each of which having two host interfaces for communications over two frequency bands (labeled as “A2” and “A5” in FIG. 10) as well as two client interfaces for communications over the two frequency bands (labeled as “C2” and “C5” in FIG. 10). For example, interfaces A2 and A5 may be host interfaces in the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz frequency bands, respectively, and interfaces C2 and C5 may be client interfaces in the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz frequency bands, respectively. In FIG. 10, even though repeater D1 and repeater D3 are not directly connected to each other, their configurations should be the same as they are part of the same network. There needs to be a mechanism for repeater D2 to decide which direction in which configuration flow or transfer is to happen (e.g., whether configuration transfer should be from repeater D2 to repeater D1 or from repeater D2 to repeater D3).
Moreover, if multiple networks with different group IDs exist within a range, such multiple networks will not merge and share configurations automatically. However, if merging of two of such networks is required, there needs to be a mechanism to allow connection between the two networks without considering the different group IDs. There also needs to be a mechanism for the two networks to determine in which direction configuration is to flow or be transferred from one of the two networks to the other network.